Issue 2156 | Magazine cover date: 17 October 1998 | New Scientist

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17 October 1998

Issue 2156

New Scientist issue 2156 cover

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On the cover

Features

Afloat in an alien sky

News

Knock on wood

Opinion

Here's the beef . . .

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New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Afloat in an alien sky

Features

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Deep secrets

Features

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

There's the rub

Features

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Young Americans

Features

Table of contents

News

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Knock on wood

AN ELECTRONIC woodpecker that can identify trees with hidden rot could save healthy trees from being damaged or felled. Foresters looking for rot normally have to drill a hole in the trunk and take a core sample. This damages the tree, so Geoff Lawday of Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College near London wanted to find a …

News

Invisible danger

News

Seeds of dissent

News

Cookies won't crumble

News

One at a time

News

Infected and infertile

News

AIDS drug deals double whammy

News

A bubble a day keeps the doctor away

News

Colour prejudice

News

Long ago, far away

News

Bouncing baby

News

Booby-trap drug

News

Double whammy

News

France refuses to grant kids immunity

News

The price of arrogance

News

Facing down Medusa

News

Cosmetics for chameleons

News

Light angles

News

Brush with disaster

News

Technology

Calling ET from home

News

A real turn-off

News

Stink bomb

News

Green paint

News

Dusty damage

News

In the nick of time

News

Holocaust

News

The whiff of fame

News

Modified potato is taken off the menu

News

Shaping up

News

Let's cool it

News

Give blood, live longer

News

On the trail

News

Safe havens

News

Just add water

News

Sea signals

News

Technology

Camera in the can

News

Technology

Whose porker is this?

News

Technology

Underwater boogie

News

Woman's work

News

Molecules of ancient life are born again

News

Fusion catches a cold

News

Think and it's done

News

Time for change

News

Lies, damned lies...

News

Split in the ranks

News

Follow that human

News

Making complex magnets the easy way

News

Back from the dead

News

Opinion

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Here's the beef . . .

SO it's true. Some of us are eating cows infected with mad cow disease, despite all the government assurances that meat is safe. Switzerland, one of the more honest countries in Europe in terms of BSE, has been testing apparently healthy cows for the rogue prion that causes the disease, with a test fast enough …

Opinion

A hole in the greenhouse

Opinion

Features

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Afloat in an alien sky

BEFORE they had rockets to fire their imaginations, science fiction writers were devoted to the balloon. It was a sort of proto-spacecraft, a piece of technology that represented humankind's transcendence over nature, that allowed new views of the world and promised travel to the most unlikely places. Unfortunately, balloons' practical limitations—they really do need atmospheres—have …

Features

Deep secrets

Features

There's the rub

Features

Young Americans

Features

More

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Ethical dilemmas

ALL progress in science and technology has an impact on people's lives. Often these effects are positive-antibiotics, computers and electricity have made our lives safer, easier and more comfortable. But inventions can bring suffering and injustice, such as nuclear war, pollution and road accidents. How do we decide what is the right and wrong use …

Inside Science

Power struggle

Forum

Vodka and sardines

Forum

. . . . .

Forum

From steel city to eco-city

Forum

Money matters

Books & Arts

Bubble trouble

Books & Arts

Book of ills

Books & Arts

Right stuff

Books & Arts

Wild life

Books & Arts

A rift in time

Books & Arts

Super snapper

Books & Arts

from Oxford

Books & Arts

Dream on

Books & Arts

Choose death

Books & Arts

Regulars

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Feedback

THE PRIZES that Feedback and the scientific establishment await each year with awe were handed out last week at Harvard University—the Ig Nobel Prizes, which reward dubious achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced" in fields from peace to safety engineering. This year's festivities, sponsored by Annals of Improbable Research, highlighted the changing nature …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word